“It was almost like I was avoiding whatever was in my heart to do something,” Toups said. “Then, something kept burning in me to do a jacket mission.”

When he first posted about the mission on Facebook in 2013, it took off.

Toups, along with his parents, sister and friends, hands out jackets at shelters the weekend before Christmas in Houma and on Christmas Day in New Orleans.

“He’s always been a very giving person, very big-hearted,” said his mom, Lori Toups. Lori said during her son’s youth, he always wanted to go to the mall during the holidays to pick out an angel child as part of the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree Program.

“The child put that he wanted a Nintendo, so (Chase) wanted to give his Nintendo to the child because he didn’t need it as much (as the child,)” Lori recalled.

People close to the car salesman in his adulthood speak to his selflessness, too, including his pastor at Cross Church of Houma.

“That’s definitely (Chase) to go out of his way to help people,” Pastor Brandon Bilbo said. “To see what he’s done is such an amazing thing.”

Toups hopes to help as many people as he can this year, as he’s done in previous years.

He has drop off locations at Trapp Cadillac Chevrolet, West Park Climate Control Self Storage, LA Sports Gym and Infinity Energy Services and Cross Church of Houma.

“I don’t even look at myself as the main person of it all,” Toups said. “It’s impossible for one person to be able to do all this. God shined a light on it and I’m just being obedient to the vision he put in front of me.”